This article presents the results of video-based Human Robot Interaction (HRI) trials which investigated people's perceptions of different robot appearances and associated attention-seeking features and behaviors displayed by robots with different appearance and behaviors. The HRI trials studied the participants' preferences for various features of robot appearance and behavior, as well as their personality attributions towards the robots compared to their own personalities. Overall, participants tended to prefer robots with more human-like appearance and attributes. However, systematic individual differences in the dynamic appearance ratings are not consistent with a universal effect. Introverts and participants with lower emotional stability tended to prefer the mechanical looking appearance to a greater degree than other participants. It is also shown that it is possible to rate individual elements of a particular robot's behavior and then assess the contribution, or otherwise, of The HRI study which provides the basis of the research presented in this article has been presented in preliminary form in two conference papers, Walters et al. (2007) andSyrdal et al. (2007b). that element to the overall perception of the robot by people. Relating participants' dynamic appearance ratings of individual robots to independent static appearance ratings provided evidence that could be taken to support a portion of the left hand side of Mori's theoretically proposed 'uncanny valley' diagram. Suggestions for future work are outlined.

In the present study we investigated humanrobot and robot-human approach distances. We found that subjects' personality profiles influence personal spatial zones in human-robot interaction experiments. We tested two hypotheses: First, we predicted that approach distances preferred by humans when interacting with a robot would be comparable to those preferred when humans interact socially with each other. Our experiments involving humans interacting with a mobile robot confirm this hypothesis. However, surprisingly, a large minority of subjects in the experiments took up positions which were significantly closer, suggesting that they were not treating the robot as a 'social entity'. We then tested the hypothesis that common personality factors exist which could be used to predict subjects' likely approach distance preferences. The subjects' personalities were assessed using several traits from the threefactor Eysenck personality model. Further analysis of the data identified four new factors, different from Eysenck's model, tentatively labeled "Proactiveness", "Social Reluctance", "Timidity" and "Nervousness". When testing for correlations between approach distances and personality data, "Proactiveness" correlates with social distance, i.e. subjects that score higher on this factor come less close to the robot. We discuss the potential suitability of personality factors to predict approach distances in human-robot interaction experiments.

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Findings are presented from a Human Robot Interaction (HRI) Demonstration Trial where attendees approached a stationary mechanical looking robot to a comfortable distance. Instructions were given to participants by the robot using either a high quality male, a high quality female, a neutral synthesized voice, or by the experimenter (no robot voice). Approaches to the robot with synthesized voice were found to induce significantly further approach distances. Those who had experienced a previous encounter with the robot tended to approach closer to the robot. Possible reasons for this are discussed

This paper presents the results from two empirical exploratory studies of human-robot interaction in the context of an initial encounter with a robot of mechanistic appearance. The first study was carried out with groups of children, and the second with single adults. The analysis concentrates on the personal space zones and initial distances between robot and humans, the context of the encounters and the human's perception of the robot as a social being. We discuss the results of these observations and analyses, and also compare the child and adult data. The child groups showed a dominant response to prefer the 'social zone' distance, comparable to distances people adopt when talking to other humans. From the single adult studies a small majority preferred the 'personal zone', reserved for talking to friends. However, significant minorities deviate from this pattern. Implications for future work are discussed.